Sheppy’s Cider Farm cut food waste collections with the PRM Bio-Processor

How Sheppy’s Cider Farm are sustainably recycling food waste

Sheppy’s Cider Farm is a 200-year-old family business near Wellington in Somerset, producing award-winning cider alongside a farm shop, deli and cheesemonger, and a café, restaurant and bar on site.

The challenge: recycling food waste sustainably, on a working farm

With a kitchen, café and restaurant all generating food waste daily, Sheppy’s Cider was keen to find a way to process it on site rather than relying on frequent collections. Over seven years ago, the farm installed a PRM Waste Systems Bio-Processor, an on-site food waste digester designed and built by PRM, to handle the job.

The Bio-Processor uses oxygen and a blend of microbes to break unavoidable food waste down into a soil enricher, reducing volume by up to 80% in 24 hours. For Sheppy’s Cider, that has meant cutting food waste collections from five a week to one, and when the nutrient-rich end product is used on site, collections can be eliminated altogether.

Louisa Sheppy, director at Sheppy’s Cider, explains: “The end residue resembles coffee grounds and has a fairly pleasant smell. It works especially well for us as we farm and can put the waste back on the land once broken down a bit and mixed with the manure. We all like the fact that this ends up on the farm and spread on the land.”

Beyond food waste

As well as processing food waste from the kitchen, café and restaurant, the Bio-Processor can handle other organic material, including garden waste and plant-based packaging, giving Sheppy’s Cider one system for more than one waste stream.

The result: fewer collections, lower costs, better working conditions

“The biggest and most noticeable difference to the staff is the absence of smelly food waste bins, but the value to the business is a reduction in food waste costs,” says Louisa Sheppy.

“Any food waste from the kitchen goes in the Bio-Processor. All of this would previously have gone in food waste bins. The whole concept and the way the machine functions quite excites the staff. Everyone cares about it, fondly knowing it as ‘The Muncher’, which could never be said about food waste bins.”

Tracking the impact

For organisations that want to track and report on their recycling and waste performance, the Bio-Processor comes with access to the PRM Portal, an online reporting tool. Customers can log in to see the volume reductions they’ve achieved and the carbon emissions they’ve saved, information many organisations use to report to increasingly sustainability-aware customers, set commercial targets, or compare performance across multiple sites.

Find out more

Find out more about the PRM Bio-Processor or contact our helpful team below:

+44 (0)1823 665541
info@prmwastesystems.com